


Quiet

by zoeteniets



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Christmas, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 16:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12436344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoeteniets/pseuds/zoeteniets
Summary: It's Christmas and Victoria is at the hospital tending to her sleeping brother.





	Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short fic from tumblr that I like too much to leave on there. This was written in response to lots of chatter on my dash from people who want Robert to be hospitalised over Christmas.

The beep of the heart monitor is the only sound. The rest of the ward is quiet. They told her that it was unusual for Christmas to be this calm.

Vic is not calm at all. There is a scream fighting to break out from her chest. Frustration and anger and loss and worry all bubble and boil in her lungs. She is grateful that no one has tried to talk to her for a few hours for fear of the sound that would come out of her throat as soon as she opened her mouth to speak.

Rob’s hand is clammy but the sweat is her own. She tries not to hope for the moment that he’ll wake up and grimace and wipe his hands on the hospital bed sheets.

She wasn’t there to see it last time. This time she has sworn that the first thing her brother will see when he wakes up is a friendly face, not a cold and empty hospital room.

The sound of the door squeaking open startles her. She turns hopefully, expecting a doctor to come with more news about Robert’s brain activity. She is disappointed.

“How is he?” her brother’s ex-husband asks.

She takes in the sight of him. It’s Christmas day but he’s not dressed for it. Jeans, t-shirt, and a hoodie slung over his folded arms. There are bags under his eyes but she can’t tell if that is due to lack of sleep or the angle of the fluorescent lighting.

“No change,” she manages.

“Oh,” comes the small reply.

Aaron shuffles his feet a bit, looks down at them, then at her, and then eventually at the pale face of the man he once professed to love.

Apparently, the spirit of Christmas charity is not with her today.

“Why are you here?”

If she is expecting a defence, she doesn’t get it, just a small shrug and a guilty look down.

“You should be with your family,” she continues.

“He is my…” Aaron cuts himself off, realising the lie in his words. Then, a changed tactic, “so should you.”

“Adam’s with his mum and the baby. Diane is with Bernice and Gabby. I don’t want him to wake up alone.”

“You’ve been here for days, Vic.”

“I know. It doesn’t matter. I just want him to wake up.”

“I do too. I…”

The silence hangs in the room.

“I told myself that I wasn’t going to come. That he wouldn’t want me to be here. That we’d burnt all the bridges. I thought that I’d never be able to forgive what he did, that the hurt went deeper than the love ever did…”

“But then?”

“But then Adam told me what happened and I was in the car and halfway here before I even knew where I was going.”

A pause. And a smile.

“He’d probably tell me off for that. Tell me that it’s not safe to be driving the state I was in and that he would be devastated if I got hurt.”

The last word is a choked sob and Vic knows that at any other time she probably would have thrown herself from her seat and wrapped him up in a hug.    

“I should have been there,” Aaron continues when Vic doesn’t interrupt him. “I should have told him I loved him when I had the chance.”

She could tell him, right now, that he will still have a chance. Or she could tell him that Robert knew, always knew, that Aaron loved him even though they couldn’t be together anymore.

“I don’t know what’s going on in that brain of his,” she says instead.

She smooths a lock of hair away from Robert’s forehead. Aaron’s eyes track her movements and she wonders briefly if he is standing by the doorway wishing their positions were swapped and he was the one fussing over the man in the bed.

“You said I should be with my family. Well, I am. He is my family,” Aaron says finally being bold in his intentions.

She stands even though the weight on her shoulder is heavy enough to push her right back down into the chair. She doesn’t want to go but she recognises the expression on Aaron’s face and the look of a man who has a lot to get off his chest and she doesn’t want to be a voyeur on someone else’s confession.  

“You’d better hope that he wakes up so that you can tell him that yourself,” she says.

“I will. He will.”

She wishes she had his optimism.

“Merry Christmas, Aaron.”

He’s already moved to her vacated seat. Already laced his hand through Robert’s. Already started bleeding his confession out with just a touch and a look and a sigh.

The beep of the heart monitor is the only sound. The rest of the world is quiet. They told her that Christmas is a time for forgiveness. She hopes someone out there is listening.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm iwillsendapostcard on tumblr xx


End file.
